The Internet Capacity Crunch

You may have experienced more buffering when watching video, especially live events. You may have had to wait longer for a game download. What you are experiencing is the growing capacity crunch.

How Content Is Delivered

We wrote a really good blog post explaining this, but here's the gist:

• Content providers, like game studios and streaming platforms, use content delivery networks (CDNs) to help them deliver their content. These CDNs have massive global networks. So, lots of infrastructure, lots of capacity that the content provider doesn't have to build (although some, like Netflix, do)

• CDNs peer with ISPs in peering fabrics. They cross-connect with the ISP so that content in the CDN caches can be transferred immediately rather than having to be backhauled over the open internet.

• ISPs, who are responsible for delivering the content to their subscriber who clicked that button or link, have to pull the content through their middle mile and then send it down the last mile to the user.

ISPs And CDNs Are Big Networks. So Where Is the Capacity Problem?

The problem with how content is delivered is not in the bullet points above. It's the method used to deliver it: unicast. See, in broadcast television, there is a single signal that everyone "tunes" into. In streaming, everyone gets their own stream. Going back to that flow of content delivery, when the CDN "hands off" the stream to the ISP, they might be doing so tens or even hundreds of thousands of times. So, the ISP network fills up with all this duplicative data.

What's Filling Up That ISP Network?

Since 2023, streaming has overtaken traditional TV, transforming how the internet is used and now accounts for 80% of all internet traffic. But that doesn't say what bitrate that streaming video is. So, consider this:

• An HD stream might be 1.5Mbps or 3.0Mbps.

• A 4K stream might be 15Mbps.

• VR might be 60Mbps or greater.

And what about game downloads? A 25 GB download might be delivered at 1Mbps, further filling up available capacity. The worst part? It's all happening at the same time and it's growing. Live streaming, for example, represents 17% of that 80% of internet traffic (that's a 15X increase since 2017). And it's projected to grow even more. By 2025, internet traffic in general is expected to surpass 1200Tbps driven largely by video streaming.

All of that traffic will flow through the ISP middle mile and down the last mile to each user that has requested a video or game download. As more people concurrently request the same content, ISP peering links to CDNs can get overwhelmed (especially for smaller ISPs that have not upgraded equipment in the teleport facilities), causing service degradation and outages. Major events like Thursday Night Football, for example, can consume up to 25% of internet traffic during broadcasts.

How The Capacity Crunch Impacts Users (And Content Owners)

ISPs can't just sit idly by as their network fills up with unicast streaming traffic that they have to deliver from CDN peering partners to their subscribers. As more people stream or download popular content simultaneously, ISPs react:

• Degraded Service: Service providers often lower video quality or cause interruptions, frustrating users who expect high-resolution streams.

• Data Caps and Fees: Because ISPs are struggling to keep up with demand, they impose data caps and new fees on users to invest in growing their capacity.

For content owners, the inefficiency of unicast delivery coupled with a lack of ISP caches can have a significant impact:

• High Costs: As more viewers stream content, delivering those individual streams becomes prohibitively expensive for content providers who may pass on those costs as increased subscription fees to end users

• Limited Reach: Current delivery infrastructure limits content providers' ability to grow their audiences without degrading performance.

As internet traffic continues to grow, it’s clear that traditional content delivery methods cannot keep pace.

Blockcast offers a more efficient solution that allows more of the internet to support rich media experiences anywhere.